


Eve

by Lilysmum



Category: The Killing
Genre: Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-19
Updated: 2014-10-19
Packaged: 2018-02-21 20:22:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,377
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2481218
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lilysmum/pseuds/Lilysmum
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is set about 4 years after the series finale.  Holder's thoughts during a trip to the park with his daughter.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Eve

**Author's Note:**

> This story came to me out of the beautiful images of Holder and Kalia that are in the last chapter of glowcult's awesome Holder/Liz fic Love Me When I'm Gone.

Eve Holder is three years old.

 

She sits in the sandbox at the park, legs splayed, digging a hole in front of herself with a yellow plastic spade.  She is a bit small for her age and slight, red-haired and blue-eyed. She has her mother’s face exactly.

 

“Where’re you digging to?” Holder asks, sips a coffee.  He doesn’t smoke now, much, and never at home, never around the kids.

 

“Mesopotamia.” The child replies simply, without looking up.  She pronounces the word precisely, carefully, the way that he has taught her.

 

“What, again?” her father asks, amused.

 

“I’m going there,” Eve looks up at him this time, as if to say, what don’t you get about this?

 

 

It had been Holder’s idea to have the baby.  Linden had balked at first.  It was when she had only just come back, a Saturday morning, she’d been pouring their coffee.

 

“Holder,” she looked up at him, handed him his mug, “Are you nuts?  My kid is almost twenty.”

 

So he nodded, laughed it off. Made some crack about the sell-by date of her eggs.  It was selfish, he supposed, to ask for more. They already had the two, between them. He told himself that he wouldn’t raise the subject again.  What more did they need.  And anyway, he had Sarah, after all that time, of believing that there was no way.

 

But his daughter with Caroline is beyond lovely, smart, strong, a girly-girl, a dancer. He has never been more proud of himself for anything, than for the way he and her mother are doing this, raising her together even though they are not.  Co-parenting.  More like Constant Compromise and Negotiation.   Worth it, though. They have a happy healthy child.

 

His fears had been groundless.

 

He is a good father, he knows he is.

 

It was after several months of seeing him with Kalia that Linden surprised him completely, told him one night, seemingly out of the blue, okay, yes.

 

He wanted to do it right this time. He’d asked her to marry him, had a ring and everything.  But he knew before the words were even out of his mouth what her answer was going to be.  No, Holder.

 

But it wasn’t exactly _horrible_.  She liked the ring, anyway, put out her hand, let him slip it onto her finger, kissed him. And then she bought him one the next week, made him close his eyes, hold his own hand out, slid it on.

 

“We’re mated for life, okay?” she explained, later, “I’ve kind of known that for a long time. Haven’t you?”

 

 

It was only another couple of weeks after that when she came at him in bed one morning and handed him the pregnancy test pee stick, a blue plus-sign showing through its little window.

 

“There you go, Holder,” she told him, “You’ve got skills.”

 

 

The pregnancy was easy but the delivery, not. Their daughter threw them a curve, the first of many, they would discover.

 

“This baby’s sunny-side up!”  Linden’s ancient doctor, the guy who’d delivered Jack, announced, when the whole process had stalled.  Holder wondered why he made it sound like a good thing, when clearly, it was not.

 

“She’s facing up, instead of down, and she’s trying to come out ear-first,” the nurse explained to him, like it was no big deal, “Hard to deliver them like that.”

 

“There’s a couple of options,” Holder could hear the doctor starting to explain, but Linden put up her hand, too weak to even lift her head from the pillow. She was having none of it.

 

“Just get her out,” she said.

 

And so they brought out the forceps, and a pair of fucking _scissors_ , and Holder almost passed out, but kept it together in the end.  He’d been there when his first daughter was born, of course, but he’d kind of forgotten, that a person’s body can actually _do that_.

 

Eve Elizabeth Holder came into the world at 7:49 am on a rainy Thursday morning. Seven pounds of piss and vinegar.

 

Holder snapped pictures with his phone, following the nurses as they took his daughter off to the side, watched as they suctioned the guck from her mouth and nose, wiped the blood off, congratulated him.   _Daddy_.

 

The baby had her eyes shut, mouth open, screaming at them all, outraged at the indignity of being pulled into the world.  Tiny fingers, curled up legs, the pinkest skin he had ever seen. Her feet were the size of this thumbs.

 

It’s no less miraculous the second time around, he discovered, staring at his new daughter through tears.

 

“Red hair,” Holder reported back over his shoulder to Linden, “And attitude,” he added, but it wasn’t what he really wanted to say. Which was that he couldn’t believe this had happened, couldn’t believe the all-at-once thrill of it, the intensity of the joy, that they’d created a life.

 

Sarah sighed, smiled weakly, nodded, spent and exhausted, tears streaming down her cheeks.

 

“Just count the fingers and toes,” she told him, “Make sure she has everything.”

 

 

Linden was wrecked after the delivery, wrecked. So Holder had taken the nights.  Their little girl was content to sleep all day, in the Snugli, the stroller, draped over a shoulder, like a small sack of potatoes, anywhere. But she came alive at midnight, those serious blue eyes locked on his. She didn’t cry, or fuss.  She was just awake, and alert. So alert. She watched everything he did, she never took her eyes off him.  He figured it wasn’t possible, yet, but he swore she was… _thinking_ about stuff.

 

And so he walked the floors, rocked her, carried her around, balanced her across his knees on the couch. He kissed the soft spot on the top of her head, felt her pulse beating there.  He was peed on, pooped on, spit up on.  Eve head-butted him mercilessly and latched onto his skin like a baby vampire if he wasn’t quick enough getting her back to Mama for the feeds. The two of them were up all night, every night. He could change the diaper with his eyes shut, practically, perfected a magic touch when it came to burping her. No one could do it like he could. They watched the tube – binge watched old cop shows, NYPD Blue, Homicide, their favourite was The Wire.

 

They were a team.

 

When the baby finally and miraculously went limp and slept he could slide her into the crib without her even noticing, and then he’d literally fall into bed, grab a couple of hours before work.  Most days he went in looking almost as bad as he had in his junkie days, and more tired than he had been in the beginning, when Linden had first come back to him. He’d been up at night then too, lots.

 

“It’ll get better,” his sister told him, unnecessarily. It wasn’t like he had complained. But it hadn’t been like this the first time, and she’d been through it twice herself. She just couldn’t resist. 

 

Moms was back on her feet, hell, even back into her jeans, by the end of the second week. And Eve soon decided for herself that nighttime was for sleeping. So he was sprung from the night shift, back in bed again.  He remembers that it felt like heaven, to actually sleep. Still, when he thinks back on it now, he always has to smile, he wouldn’t trade those nights spent with his girl for anything.

 

Last year was hard, when she was two. The girl is a risk taker. She has no sense of danger, when she’s on a mission. Holder had read this was supposed to be a good thing, a sign of intelligence, which he knew she had in spades. But it wasn’t easy on the dad. Almost every time he took her out she gave him a heart attack. She’d run away, ahead of him, looking back over her shoulder, laughing at him. She never wanted to hold his hand. She’d already had stitches once. God, he’d felt like a criminal, taking her to the emergency, explaining, she jumped, she fell. And then she’d refused to be comforted, squirmed out of his grasp, impatient, and watched fascinated as she received five perfect stitches in her little knee.

 

Things are easy now. Eve is a great kid. Smart and quiet, she’s a thinker.  She’s never needy, or clingy, she eats everything, she’s never sick. She loves her big sister, follows her around, copies her, even though they are nothing alike. She’s equally crazy about her brother, climbs up his body like a monkey, and locks her arms around his neck. She wants to know everything, to go everywhere. She runs, she climbs, she is starting to read already. Fascinated with dolphins, sharks, whales. Or mummies. Or bats. Or the moon. It’s different every week.

 

There is a bit of drama surrounding the hair, though, sometimes.  But Sarah has infinite patience, with the combing, the detangling. One night he overheard her telling their daughter that she’d always had to have hers cut off, as a kid, because there had been nobody around who would take the time to help her look after it.  If Eve wanted long hair that was just fine.

 

And bed time can be a challenge. Eve doesn’t want to miss anything. They could read to her for hours, she’ll never give up.  She pats his face when he falls asleep reading to her, which is often. “Dad – no sleeping.”  Sometimes Linden has to come in and sort them out.

 

He has a slew of nicknames for her, and uses them all, silly ones like Goo-Goo Doll and Hot Shot and Cowgirl. Every possible variation of her own name like Evie, Eva, Evita, Big Eee, Little Eee, or just plain Eee.  She calls him Dad, never Daddy.  Sometimes, she calls him Holder.

 

She’s not much of a cuddler.  It used to sting his feelings. Kalia was a love-bug - he’d just assumed they all were.

 

“Cuddling takes too long.” this one told him, once, as she slid down, off of his lap, leaving him bereft.

 

Linden gets it. “She’s just busy, Holder,” she told him rubbing his shoulders, kissing him. And it’s really not that bad, though, because Eve does surprise him, when she’s in the mood. She crawls up, lays on him with her ear against his chest, listening. “I like your heart,” she tells him.

 

It’s her fashion sense that entertains them the most. She’s always in costume, in some way.   A Spiderman suit, or a tutu, a cowboy hat, or maybe her child-sized tool belt. Her very favourite place is the Sally Ann thrift shop, she can always find something to wear. Today it’s her brother’s old water polo cap and a sarcophagus-shaped amulet around her neck.

 

“What planet is she from?” Sarah had asked him earlier today, laughing as she watched their daughter barrel down the stairs, out the front door to stand on the porch with her hands on her hips, waiting for her dad to follow.

 

Holder knows. “Planet Linden,” he answered, enjoying the eye roll, the smile. Ha. He got her. She asked for it.

 

 

It’s late.  There is nobody else left at the park.  Eve has made good progress with the pit she is digging.  She’s up on her knees now, to get better leverage with her shovel.  He could almost sit forever, watching her do her thing. Somehow this one has taken the restlessness out of him.

 

“Eve, we gotta go,” He tells her, finishes his coffee and tosses the cup into the trash. “You know the drill. Bath. Dinner. Story. Bed.”

 

The child looks up at him, and he knows _that look,_ knows he has to dazzle her to get his way. So far she is an easier mark than her mother.

 

“If we don’t go now we’ll be in deep, deep kaka,” he explains, stands and grasps his daughter under the arms, lifts her into the air to face him, until they are nose to nose.

 

“You’re so pretty,” he tells her, and kisses her, plants a big smooch on her cheek and gets grains of sand in his mouth for his efforts.

 

The child frowns for a second, then “No _, you are_!” she insists, can’t help herself, and she’s laughing already, she knows what’s coming next.

 

Holder lifts her higher, plants his chin in the hollow beneath her collarbone – that’s the spot - tickles her with it, and Eve screams with laughter, throws her head back, mouth open, showing perfect baby teeth.

 

She’s still laughing when he sets her back down, wobbly-kneed, tries to take her hand.  But she won’t let him, of course she won’t, and she runs ahead of him, like she does, she always wants the upper hand, this girl.

 

 

The screen door slams in front of him, before he can grab it. Sarah’s in the kitchen, sticks her head out into the hallway in time to see her daughter run into the house and fly up the stairs, a blur of auburn waves, skinny legs and freckles.

 

“Mesopotamia!” the girl calls to her mother.

 

Holder makes it in the front door.

 

“She’s full of sand…” he tells Linden, stops to breathe.

 

Sarah nods, eyebrows raised, she figured as much. She exits the kitchen, holding a spoon out to Holder to take.  She points back over her shoulder into the kitchen where a pot bubbles on the stove, makes a stirring motion with her hand.

 

“Can you…?” she asks him as she heads up the stairs.

 

“Yeah,” he takes the spoon, walks into the kitchen to investigate.

 

It’s still sometimes hard for him to believe that he gets to do this, that he gets to be This Guy.  The guy who gets to wake up next to Sarah Linden every morning. The guy who has not one but _two_ smart gorgeous daughters, and a stepson he can have a beer with. The guy who has an actual home, hell, an actual _life_.

 

He doesn’t know who to thank for it – if it’s God or Fate or Karma or just Dumb Luck that brought him here.  But he thanks them every day, anyway, whoever they are.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for the inspiration for this as well as the insightful and beautiful beta read, my friend, you know who you are!


End file.
